CHICAGO – Cubs lefty Shota Imanaga spun around on the mound, grimaced and threw his head back, looking to the heavens. Manny Machado tossed away his bat and turned to his Padres teammates in the first-base dugout, flexing and shouting as he bounded up the line.
At a critical point in Game 2 of the National League Wild Card Series on Wednesday, Imanaga chose to challenge Machado, and the decision backfired in momentum-swinging fashion. Machado’s towering two-run blast in the fifth inning helped send the Cubs to a 3-0 loss at Wrigley Field and, in turn, forced a decisive Game 3 on Thursday.
“We knew it was going to be tough,” Cubs center fielder Pete Crow-Armstrong said. “I don’t think any of us expected to have the Padres just lay down. I mean, it would’ve been really nice to just get this series over with today, but we’re also prepared to come back tomorrow and do it again.”
With their win in Game 1, the Cubs were in prime position, given that 18 of 20 teams to win the opener of the best-of-three Wild Card Series advanced to the next round. That said, teams with a winner-take-all game in their home ballpark have gone 64-66 in postseason history. The Padres are the first team in the history of the Wild Card Series to force a third game after losing the opener on the road.
While Chicago’s lineup went dark against Padres righty Dylan Cease and San Diego’s deep relief corps, it was the Imanaga versus Machado matchup that rightfully wound up under the microscope. That Imanaga was allowed to face the right-handed slugger was a debatable decision.
“Look, the results suggest that we should have done something different,” Cubs manager Craig Counsell said. “Really [it was] just confidence in Shota, plain and simple, there. I thought he was pitching well.”
The decision had another layer to it as well, given how Counsell set up his pitching with a 1-0 advantage in the best-of-three series.
Rather than have Imanaga – the Cubs’ Opening Day starter this year – start against the Padres, Counsell had veteran reliever Andrew Kittredge serve as an opener. The idea was to limit Imanaga’s exposure to the top of San Diego’s lineup, especially with the righty bats of Fernando Tatis Jr. and Machado in the first and third slots, respectively.
Imanaga struggled with surrendering home runs this season, giving up 31 in 144 2/3 innings. That included a dozen in his final six starts of the regular season, giving him a rate of 1.93 homers allowed per nine innings on the campaign. That was the highest mark among MLB pitchers with at least 140 innings in '25.
That made it logical to have a righty reliever cover the first inning and ask Imanaga to enter in relief. As it happened, Tatis and Luis Arraez jumped on Kittredge with consecutive singles in the opening frame, pulled off a double steal and then created a run via a sacrifice fly off the bat of Jackson Merrill.
“Really, hindsight, letting them double steal [hurts],” Kittredge said. “I was very aware of Tatis. He was kind of hopping around there. He just picked the one pitch that was a good one to go on. That was the most frustrating part of the outing for me.”
Imanaga kept the Padres off the board over the next three innings and struck out Freddy Fermin – San Diego’s No. 9 hitter – to begin the fifth. That brought up the top of the Padres’ order for a second crack at the lefty. With the count full, Imanaga tried to entice a swing out of Tatis with a sweeper that tailed under the zone, but the Padres star held up and drew a walk.
That brought up Arraez, who used a sacrifice bunt to move Tatis to second with the Cubs trailing, 1-0. It was a free out that opened up first base with Machado due up next with two outs. At the same time, Counsell had hard-throwing righty Michael Soroka warming in the bullpen. Counsell said Soroka was not going to be used for Machado, but the manager did consider walking Machado.
What was Machado expecting to do as he walked to the plate?
“Hitting, for sure,” he said. “I mean, I don't put a manager's cap on. I'm 0-for-6 [in the series] at that point. So yeah, I'm not thinking about [being walked]. For myself, I was just thinking about trying to get to Imanaga.”
Imanaga and Machado had squared off in nine at-bats prior to this series, with the lefty holding him to a 1-for-9 showing with six strikeouts. The one exception? A home run in a 2-1 Cubs win at Petco Park on April 15. In the first battle Wednesday, Imanaga continued his success against the San Diego third baseman, inducing a flyout to right field in the third inning.
“He kind of owns me a little bit,” Machado said. “Look at the numbers. I don't do too well.”
In the fifth inning, Imanaga went with his signature splitter to start things off, but the pitch did not dive as intended and instead hung in the heart of the zone. Machado did what he is paid to do, launching the ball high and deep into the left-field bleachers. The blast extended his Padres record for career postseason home runs to eight.
“In that situation, walking him, it wasn’t really too much in my head,” Imanaga said via his interpreter, Edwin Stanberry. “It was maybe like a 50-50, but that splitter was meant for down in the zone. It just hung a little bit and, for me, it was just like, ‘Why did that happen?’ It’s something I’m going to think about.”
Kittredge said Imanaga should not beat himself up over one errant pitch.
“It’s hard to swallow sometimes, but we’re going to give up runs,” Kittredge said. “We’re going to get hit. You’ve got to move on to that next-pitch mentality. The game was still within reach after that. We just weren’t able to scratch anything across.”